Pondering the Past, Present and Future

Let’s step away from electronics assembly challenges, and deep considerations of solder paste, solder preforms and wave soldering, to ponder where electronics have gone in the past decade or so.

The mobile phone of the early 2000s was just that, a phone. Today it is a phone, music player, PalmPilot-type organizer, camera (still and video), video player, gamer, TV remote, GPS system, web portal, etc. There is almost nothing electronic that it can’t do. The USB memory stick of 2002 with 0.5Gb of memory cost $500, today $5 will get you a 4Gb one, a cost reduction of 800:1 the equivalent of halving in price about every year.

There is no reason to expect any less dramatic advancements in the future. But, predicting the future of electronics is never easy. In the January 2013 edition of Scientific American Ed Regis wrote an article titled, “The Bold and Foolish Effort to Predict the Future of Computing.” In this article, Regis interviewed eight computer luminaries, including Stephen Wolfram and Nathan Myhrvold, to ascertain their perspectives on where computing will be in 150 years. The conclusion was that no one can predict the future of computing. As interviewee George Dyson said, “All I can guarantee is that any prediction will be wrong.”

One person less humbled by the difficulties of computing predictions is Ray Kurzweil. His prediction success level of more than 80% would seem to support such confidence. Kurzweil also just got a new job at Google. I am finishing his new book How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, and, while I finding it fascinating, I think he goes too far. He believes the mind is a sophisticated computer and that, when computers get to a certain point equaling and surpassing the human mind’s computational ability, they will be considered human.

Supporting this point, he hopes to, someday, resurrect his father, as Bloomberg states:
“Among the stranger things Ray Kurzweil will say to your face is that he intends to bring his father back to life. The famed inventor has a storage locker full of memorabilia—family photographs, letters, even utility bills—tied to his father, Fredric, who died in 1970. Someday, Kurzweil hopes to feed these data trove into a computer that will reconstruct a virtual rendering of dear old Dad.”

Call me a religious fanatic, but I think there is something more to each of us than our memories and our brains’ computing ability.

Kurzweil endorses the IBM Watson computer system’s victory in Jeopardy in February of 2011 as a major step in the direction of computers as humans. IBM provided commercial support for these Jeopardy episodes. In the commercials they strongly reminded us that Watson was not thinking, but only doing what it (not “he”) was programmed to do. Someone summed it up nicely, Watson won, but did he know he won?

I think there are a few major things that people like Kurzweil minimize when they propose that computers will be recognized as human. These points are:

1. Humans are sentient (they would know whether or not they won or lost Jeopardy; we have emotions and feelings). I know of no progress in sentience development for machines.

2. Humans have a will. We get up in the morning, we decide what we will do that day and do it. There is no progress (thankfully?) in giving computers a will.

3. Humans have a biological body. We smell the newly cut grass, feel a refreshing breeze, get tired, enjoy a meal, enjoy sports etc. It is easy for some to minimize the importance of the body in being human. Again no progress in this area.

However, I don’t want to minimize much of what Kurzweil predicts. In her groundbreaking book, Alone Together, Sherry Turkle tells us that, in addition to the fact that the average teenager in the US sends 200 text messages a day, electronic companions already exist. As time goes by they will become more realistic and will be capable of interesting and stimulating speech and interaction. Having all of the world’s knowledge at their fingertips (pun intended), these companions will likely be more stimulating than people, they will easily pass the Turing Test, and, for good or ill, will make us more “alone together” than ever. But our companion will not love, fear, hate, or know that it is a companion.

As has been pointed out, this brave new world is coming whether we like it or not.
Btw, on another topic, the History Channel has produced a terrific video series, Men Who Built America. It is a the spellbinding story of Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, Edison, and Henry Ford. If you missed it, it is coming out in DVD in January.

Cheers and best for the New Year,
Dr. Ron

About Dr. Ron

Materials expert Dr. Ron Lasky is a professor of engineering and senior lecturer at Dartmouth, and senior technologist at Indium Corp. He has a Ph.D. in materials science from Cornell University, and is a prolific author and lecturer, having published more than 40 papers. He received the SMTA Founders Award in 2003.